This is my personal take, not an organizational one. Originally written May 2025, revived for the EA Forum's Draft Amnesty Week. Cross-posted from the EA Forum but cross-posting didn't work the first time.

When I discovered the beginnings of EA, it felt like coming home. I had finally found a group of people who cared as much as I did about saving lives.

When I discovered rationality not long after, it felt new. The intensity of LessWrong was both offputting and fascinating to me, and I read a lot of the site in the summer of 2011. I had studied sociology and was used to thinking in terms of ethics and emotions, but not in terms of statistics or economics. LessWrongers were picky and disagreeable, but I learned reasoning skills from them.

Before EA even had a name, LessWrong was one of the best places to talk [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.